"What are you doing here?" she went over to him.

The prince murmured something in embarrassment and jumped up from his chair; but Aglaya at once sat down next to him, and he sat down again. She looked him over, suddenly but attentively, then looked out the window, as if without any thought, then again at him. "Maybe she wants to laugh," it occurred to the prince, "but no, she'd just laugh then."

"Maybe you'd like some tea. I'll tell them," she said after some silence.

"N-no ... I don't know . . ."

"Well, how can you not know that! Ah, yes, listen: if someone challenged you to a duel, what would you do? I meant to ask you earlier."

"But . . . who ... no one is going to challenge me to a duel."

"Well, but if someone did? Would you be very afraid?"

"I think I'd be very . . . afraid."

"Seriously? So you're a coward?"

"N-no, maybe not. A coward is someone who is afraid and runs away; but someone who is afraid but doesn't run away is not a coward yet," the prince smiled after pondering a little.

"And you wouldn't run away?"

"Maybe I wouldn't," he finally laughed at Aglaya's questions.

"I'm a woman, but I wouldn't run away for anything," she observed, almost touchily. "And, anyhow, you're clowning and making fun of me in your usual way, to make yourself more interesting. Tell me: don't they usually shoot from twelve paces? Sometimes even from ten? Doesn't that mean you're sure to be killed or wounded?"

"People must rarely be hit at duels."

"Rarely? Pushkin was killed."⁵

"That may have been accidental."

"Not accidental at all. They fought to kill and he was killed."

"The bullet struck so low that d'Anthès must have been aiming somewhere higher, at his chest or head; no one aims to hit a man where he did, so the bullet most likely hit Pushkin accidentally, from a bad shot. Competent people have told me so."

"But I was told by a soldier I once talked with that, according to regulations, when they open ranks, they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man; that's how they say it: 'at the half-man.' That means not at the chest, not at the head, but they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man. Later I asked an officer, and he said that was exactly right."

"It's right because they shoot from a great distance."

"And do you know how to shoot?"

"I've never done it."

"Do you at least know how to load a pistol?"

"No, I don't. That is, I understand how it's done, but I've never loaded one myself."

"Well, that means you don't know how, because it takes practice! Listen now and learn well: first, buy good gunpowder, not damp (they say it mustn't be damp, but very dry), the fine sort, you can ask about it, but not the kind used for cannons. They say you have to mold the bullet yourself. Do you have pistols?"

"No, and I don't need any," the prince suddenly laughed.

"Ah, what nonsense! You must certainly buy one, a good one,

French or English, they say they're the best. Then take some powder, a thimbleful or maybe two thimblefuls, and pour it in. Better put in more. Ram it down with felt (they say it absolutely must be felt for some reason), you can get that somewhere, from some mattress, or doors are sometimes upholstered with felt. Then, when you've stuffed the felt in, you put in the bullet—do you hear, the bullet after, and the felt before, otherwise it won't fire. Why are you laughing? I want you to shoot several times a day and learn to hit the mark without fail. Will you do it?"

The prince laughed; Aglaya stamped her foot in vexation. Her serious air, in such a conversation, surprised the prince a little. He partly felt that he had to find out about something, to ask about something—in any case about something more serious than how to load a pistol. But everything flew out of his mind, except for the one fact that she was sitting before him, and he was looking at her, and what she talked about at that moment made scarcely any difference to him.

Finally Ivan Fyodorovich himself came down to the terrace from upstairs; he was headed somewhere with a frowning, preoccupied, and determined look.

"Ah, Lev Nikolaich, it's you . . . Where to now?" he asked, though Lev Nikolaevich had not thought of moving from his place. "Come along, I'll tell you a little something."

"Good-bye," said Aglaya, and she gave the prince her hand.

It was already rather dark on the terrace; the prince could not make out her face quite clearly at that moment. A minute later, as he and the general were leaving the dacha, he suddenly turned terribly red and clenched his right hand tightly.

It turned out that Ivan Fyodorovich was going the same way he was; despite the late hour, Ivan Fyodorovich was hurrying to speak with someone about something. But meanwhile he suddenly began talking with the prince, quickly, anxiously, rather incoherently, often mentioning Lizaveta Prokofyevna. If the prince could have been more attentive at that moment, he might have guessed that Ivan Fyodorovich wanted among other things to find out something from him as well, or, better, to ask him directly and openly about something, but never managed to touch on the chiefest point. To his shame, the prince was so distracted that at the very beginning he did not even hear anything, and when the general stopped in front of him with some burning question, he was forced to confess that he understood nothing.

The general shrugged his shoulders.

"You've all become some sort of strange people, in all respects," he started talking again. "I tell you, I utterly fail to understand Lizaveta Prokofyevna's ideas and anxieties. She's in hysterics, she weeps and says we've been covered with shame and disgrace. By whom? How? With whom? When and why? I confess I'm to blame (I admit it), greatly to blame, but the importunities of this . . . troublesome woman (and ill-behaved besides) can finally be restricted by the police, and even tonight I intend to see a certain person and give warning. Everything can be arranged quietly, meekly, affectionately even, through connections and without any scandal. I also agree that the future is fraught with events and much is unexplained; there's some intrigue involved; but if they don't know anything here, they can't explain anything there either; if I haven't heard, you haven't heard, this one hasn't heard, that one hasn't heard, then who, finally, has heard, I ask you? What can explain it, in your opinion, except that the affair is half a mirage, doesn't exist, like moonlight, for instance ... or other phantoms."

"She is a madwoman," the prince murmured, suddenly remembering, with pain, all that had happened earlier.

"That's the word, if you mean her. Somewhat the same idea used to visit me, and then I'd sleep peacefully. But now I see that others think more correctly, and I don't believe it's madness. She's a cantankerous woman, granted, but with that also a subtle one, anything but crazy. Today's escapade to do with Kapiton Alexeich proves it only too well. It's a crooked business on her part, Jesuitical at the very least, for her own purposes."

"What Kapiton Alexeich?"

"Ah, my God, Lev Nikolaich, you're not listening at all. I began by telling you about Kapiton Alexeich; I'm so struck that even now I'm trembling from head to foot. That's why I came late from the city today. Kapiton Alexeich Radomsky, Evgeny Pavlych's uncle . . ."